Just a few months after launching his bid for the open Nevada attorney general seat, Democratic state Treasurer Zach Conine is scheduled to be in federal court — defending his office against a nearly 6-year-old wrongful termination lawsuit filed by an ex-employee.

The lawsuit claims Conine, the State of Nevada and the state treasurer’s office — which consists of 45 employees overseeing college savings programs, scholarships, investments and more — violated a host of federal anti-discrimination laws by firing a former employee, Sheila Salehian, who alleged that she was subjected to a hostile working environment based on age- and disability-related discrimination.

Salehian, who previously led the office’s Millennium Scholarship program and was in her late 50s when she was dismissed, is seeking back pay, compensation for mental and emotional stress, attorney’s fees and a reinstatement to her position. 

Her case, filed in 2021, hit a major initial snag when a federal district court judge in 2023 agreed to the state’s motion to dismiss all of the claims without a trial, writing that Salehian failed “to create a genuine dispute of fact for any of her five claims.” 

But on appeal, a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel reversed part of the decision related to an alleged violation of the Aging Discrimination in Employment Act, allowing the case to proceed on only one age discrimination claim; the trial is scheduled for Sept. 11. Conine is listed in court documents as a potential witness.

It comes as Conine, wrapping up his second and final term as state treasurer, faces a Democratic primary for the attorney general seat against Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro (D-Las Vegas), who announced plans to run for the seat in mid-July. Accusations raised in the complaint may come up on the campaign trail, though only the age discrimination claim has not been rejected as lacking merit.

The lawsuit turned up as part of a search of court records — a routine step The Nevada Independent is conducting for major candidates. It gives an unvarnished glimpse into how Conine manages workplace disputes, especially as he seeks to manage a larger and more complex attorney general’s office. 

In a statement, the treasurer's office noted that it has "already prevailed on 10 of 11 claims originally filed in this case."

"The Treasurer’s Office remains confident that a jury will likewise conclude that the remaining claim has no merit and that the Treasurer’s Office followed the applicable law in this case," the office said in a statement to The Nevada Independent.

Michael Balaban, an attorney representing Salehian, said in a statement that there is “overwhelming evidence of age discrimination" and “we are confident that a jury will agree with this assessment and will find both Mr. Conine and the treasurer's office liable for age discrimination when the case goes to trial in September.”

Alleged age discrimination

Salehian alleges Conine and the office discriminated in firing her because of her age — Salehian was 58 at the time she was fired, and the person who replaced her as head of the scholarship program was 38, the complaint stated.

As a staffer for an elected official, Salehian was considered “unclassified” and at-will, meaning she could be terminated at any time without cause. But Salehian’s attorneys countered that once an age discrimination case is established, there must be a legitimate reason for the firing.

Conine, in his deposition, said he doesn’t keep data on his employees' ages. 

“I have zero idea of how old people are,” Conine said in his deposition, adding that he is only certain of his wife and children's ages.

In the initial complaint, Salehian pointed to a variety of “harassing comments” made by then-Chief of Staff Miles Dickson that she found offensive.

Dickson declined to comment, but in his deposition, he disagreed with the characterization of those remarks as derogatory. 

The first incident raised in the complaint happened in March 2019 when Dickson asked how long Salehian had been with the office. When Salehian said it had been seven years, Dickson replied that “she had been with the state forever,” which Salehian said made her feel “embarrassed” and “belittled.”

The complaint also said that in September 2019, when the treasurer’s office moved to a new location, Salehian was given a smaller office than those of younger employees.

Dickson’s stated reason for the move, per the complaint, was to “refresh the office” and because he “was interested in fresh faces and starting with a clean slate” — comments interpreted by Salehian as Dickson wanting younger staff in the office, according to the complaint.

Conine, in his deposition, did not recall assigning Salehian to a smaller office than her younger peers, saying she “was in the same space for her entire employment under me.” 

In the 2023 ruling granting the state’s motion to dismiss the claim, Judge Cristina Silva wrote that Salehian failed to clear an evidentiary hurdle showing that younger employees in the office with similar job responsibilities were treated differently. 

In these kinds of cases, employers have to prove that the employee was fired for reasons other than just age, said Ruben Garcia, a professor of employment law and director of the Workplace Law Program at the William S. Boyd School of Law.

Silva wrote in her ruling that Salehian needed to provide evidence that could contradict Conine’s listed rationale for the firing — that she was resistant to changes and unprofessional to coworkers. 

Attorneys for the treasurer’s office wrote in a motion that Salehian was “unwilling to focus on the Treasurer Conine’s priorities.” Dickson, in his deposition, said Salehian regularly advocated for a financial literacy program that Dickson said the treasurer’s office didn’t have “energy” for. 

Salehian’s attorney argued that the office did not give Salehian or her supervisor any indication of unsatisfactory performance. This, Silva wrote, was not direct evidence and was insufficient to pass the legal muster needed for the case to proceed. Attorneys for Salehian, in a motion, denied she displayed unprofessional conduct, citing affidavits from former supervisors and coworkers.

The 9th Circuit panel sided with Salehian on that point, writing that an affidavit from a former supervisor saying Salehian put up “no resistance to the changes Treasurer Conine put in place once he took office” was enough to reverse the district court’s order on that specific claim and allow it to advance.

Family and Medical Leave Act

Weeks before Salehian was terminated in October 2019, she was diagnosed with skin cancer. In the complaint, she said she informed her supervisors of her medical condition and was granted multiple remote work days to recover from her chemotherapy treatments.

Attorneys for the state, the treasurer’s office and Conine asserted that Conine and Dickson had already decided to terminate Salehian before learning of her medical condition, according to the 2022 motion to dismiss the case.

Salehian returned to the office Oct. 28, 2019, intending to submit paperwork to Conine, Dickson and her supervisor to initiate medical leave under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), but instead of accepting it, the complaint stated she was fired.

Conine disputed this in his deposition, saying that Salehian had never mentioned to him that she needed to take FMLA leave, and at the meeting where she was fired “did not try to hand me a piece of paper.”

Attorneys for Conine argued in a motion for summary judgment filed in September 2022 that Salehian “cannot invoke FMLA protection on the basis of an unexecuted plan to request FMLA leave.”

However, an employer knowing that an employee plans to take medical leave and terminating them beforehand could be seen as retaliation, said Garcia, who noted he was speaking generally and not about this specific case.

“Even if, at the end of the day, it's not technically an FMLA violation; you can still be retaliated against for something that you know the employer thinks you're going to do,” Garcia said.

Although Conine said the decision was made in August, Conine noted in his deposition that there were no notes taken during that meeting. In the motion, attorneys for Conine point to a September 2019 email where Dickson discussed Oct. 4, 2019, as a target date for Salehian’s termination. 

The FMLA claims were ultimately dismissed by a district court judge and affirmed on appeal, meaning the claim will not come up during the upcoming trial.

Nevada Independent intern Lizzie Ramirez contributed to this report.